photographs from the amazing elephant sanctuary in chiang mai, thailand

 we found that elephants way prefer their fruits over their vegetables.

we were told this elephant is wearing a chain because he is "naughty."  he still seemed pretty happy.

after having the nicest, most relaxed week--and realizing that next week will probably be the opposite of relaxing--i buckled down and edited the rest of the photographs from my trip!  i'll post them in sections and today it's all about elephants.  visiting the elephant nature park outside of chiang mai was a huge highlight of my trip. it seems like everyone who goes to thailand wants to see elephants, but what most people don't know is that a lot of these elephants are mistreated.  elephants are strong and sensitive creatures and the training process their owners put them through to break their spirits is really awful.  many elephants are brought to big cities like bangkok so their owners can earn money from tourists but they are not built for the busy life (they pick up sensations from miles away through their feet and are totally overwhelmed by traffic).  also, they eat a lot--like over 1,000 lbs of food a day and people rarely feed them enough.

seeing these problems, a little but brave lady named lek decided to start rescuing elephants.  it started with one and today it's almost 30.  mostly these elephants have been bought out of bad situations after they've been trained but she has been able to train one completely wild elephant just through love and positive reinforcement. also, they have rescued over 200 dogs who all lounge around the center like they own the place.  it's an expensive visit and definitely very touristy but so worth it.  plus, i really like to see places like this find a strong income stream (although i think they could always use more if you want to donate).  this bustling business keeps the elephants eating plenty of bananas and cucumbers and tourists happy to have seen such peaceful elephants. 


 also, i've been loving the five kundalini yoga sutras from yogi bhajan.  the second and third ones have been particularly helpful to me in the past couple of weeks.

1. Recognize that the other person is you.
2. There is a way through every block.
3. When the time is on you, start, and the pressure will be off.
4. Understand through compassion or you will misunderstand the times.
5. Vibrate the Cosmos. The Cosmos shall clear the path.

a moment of pure glee

from our hike in white oak canyon yesterday...

julian's first photo shoot and self-care 101

i feel so honored to have taken these first photographs of baby julian! he's only seven days old in the photograph and already lighting up everything around him.

***

when i was in sixth grade, my extended family rented a lake house in maine for a week.  when i needed a break from the group, i turned to the house's little beach-reading lending library.  obviously, my first choice was a danielle steele novel about scandalous movie stars trying to make their way in the industry.  after reading that in about a day, i returned to the shelf and picked up a book called A Year of Beauty and Health by Beverly and Vidal Sasson (1976).   it contained the detailed daily, monthly and yearly routine of this 70's power couple.  dated as it was, i was fascinated by how they planned their lives.  each morning began with hot lemon water and yogic stretching in bed, they fasted for one weekend a month and changed their diets with the season.  they were exuberant about the results and urged everyone to try these practices for better health.  as an overweight, somewhat reclusive 12-year-old,  this was definitely not the way i envisioned my life.  i enjoyed frozen french fries during most afternoons of the year and specifically did not enjoy any form of exercise.  still, the book spoke to something in me and i brought it back home.  it was on my bookshelf for years and i would read through it from time to time just to get a little shiver of inspiration up my spine.
fast-forwarding 20 years, my interest in the book makes perfect sense.  the sassons were essentially describing a yogic lifestyle.  today, i drink lemon water as many mornings as i remember to buy lemons, do yogic stretching on the daily and love the ayurvedic practice of changing my food with each season.   i am still not a huge fan of fasting but i do it from time to time.  (i just decided today that i'll be doing a kitchari cleanse during the first week of september. it will be hard to eat the same thing for three days but i know i will be happy for it afterward.)  these are ancient practices for good health and i do them because they make me feel grounded, clear-headed, and full of energy.  of course, i forget to do them of the time and then start to feel like crap and drink extra coffee to compensate and suffer until i break the cycle and do something kind for myself.  always, there is such power in remembering how to do right for myself.

i'm still fascinated by self-care as a practice.  i've essentially made my career around it and bring it up often in conversation.  i love reading books and articles where people will fess up to their specific practices. in that spirit,  here are a few of the things that have been most wonderful for me of late.

1.  i get eight hours of sleep.  there is no substitute for what this does for my overall well-being.  i've learned that i can't sleep in like i used to so this means going to bed before 11pm most nights.

2.  first things out of bed:  i pee, scrape my tongue (swear by this), splash my face six times with cold water and put some nice-smelling, soothing rose water on my face.  of late, i've taking advatage of the time adam is walking poncho to light some incense on my alter and chat my mantra 108 times.  the timing usually works out perfectly that i finish my mantra just as they come back.

3.  five days or so a week, i spend 45 minutes in the later morning doing my morning pages, reading a course in miracles and meditating.  this is a powerful combination for me that diffuses negativity and reminds me how i really want to live my life. 

4.  most days i do some amount of yoga (vinyasa flow, acroyoga, or kundalini) but i must do at least one session of restorative or yin yoga a week (i love the ones on yogaglo) for the health of my nervous system.  i do this mostly on wednesday afternoons--right in a middle of a busy few days of teaching and after i feel so rebooted.

5.  this is kind of new but it seems to be working well:  unless it's a special occasion, i limit my intake to one cup of coffee and one alcoholic drink a day.  i never enjoy the second one as much as i think i will and especially with alcohol, i am starting to feel the second one the next day.

6.  caring for my dog poncho also feels like self-care.  we go for a walks around the cathedral near my house almost every day and once a week we head somewhere beautiful like rock creek park to feel the tall trees around us and breath a big sigh of relief.

of course there are other little things but those seem like the most important ones.  now i'm so curious about yours. what are they? write down your top five, follow them for a week and see how you feel.  bonus, post one in the comments section to help us all keep the inspiration going. 

(if you live in dc and are interested in learning more about self-care, come to my Self-care 101 workshop next weekend.  it's on sunday, september 1st from 2:30-4:30pm at the bloomingdale yoga district.  click here for more information. )

first batch

 this thai beauty lives at the elephant nature park, an elephant sanctuary and animal rescue 

outside of chiang mai.  it's an amazing place.

 the view from our morning yoga deck.

 sarita and i playing after our last class of the retreat.

 

little balinese dancer 

 this is one of the original thai massage diagrams at wat pho in bangkok.

judith and jody after a temple ceremony in bali.

balinese blessing

editing photographs after a big trip, like the one i just took to thailand and bali, always intimidates me.  in addition to the jet lag and the laundry and the emails, getting my personal photographs in order in a way that i can show the world what i experienced sits a little heavy on my to-do list.  that is, until i actually just sit down and make myself do it.  once i do, i am absorbed in the memories and really happy to see what actually surfaced through the images.  to be really honest, it took me years of studying photojournalism in college and my first year of doing this professionally to believe that i hadn't royally screwed up the photographs with each shoot.  editing always began tense and ended with a pleasant surprise and the thought "i guess i got lucky this time."  (in my defense, i saw an awesome magnum photographer speak once and he said he feels the same way after every shoot).  now i do trust myself and have some great self-talk to ease my nerves before a shoot.  more than almost everything, photography teaches me to trust the process and to trust myself.  if i show up on time and do my very best, then the results are usually pretty good.

now that i write that, "self-trust" feels like a good way to describe my trip.  i really did plan my journey in risky ways.  i bought no "lonely planets."  i didn't have a thai massage teacher when i showed up in chiang mai. although i have led yoga retreats abroad before, i have never done one so far or known how many travel issues can crop up with 11 people traveling around the world.  sarita and i had only seen photographs of our retreat center on their webpage and i had little voice in my head that would mention now and then that perhaps we were getting scammed. 

yet i went anyways.  after 35 hours of traveling,  i got giddy upon landing in chiang mai.  the surrounding hills were green and the people were kind and within three days of asking around, i found my thai massage teacher.  nha ja was experienced and jolly and taught me many things about thai massage.  but mostly she just told me that i knew what i was doing and that it was ok for me to spread thai massage around the world.  she gave me permission to trust myself.  that, along with the excellent food and a surprisingly great yoga studio, made my trip to thailand so, so worth it.

and of course that trend continued as i headed south to bali.  it was stunningly beautiful, the people were kind, and things fell began falling into place. of course there were travel issues but my students amazed me in how calmly they handled each one.  we settled into our daily schedule, waking up when it was still dark to practice ancient kundalini breathwork, followed by sweaty vinyasa flow and then finished the afternoon with meditation and journaling which brought so much to the surface.  in between we had delicious meals and took walks to the sea and got massaged.  of course, the yoga retreat center was way more beautiful than the website could express and this physical beauty paled in comparison to the lovely staff at gaia oasis.  we were taken care of so incredibly well, with a spirit that felt more like close family than business. when it came time to say goodbye to them, i only had tears and gratitude for such big things they had given us.

this spirit of giving is what i most want to take with me from this experience.   it's given me something to ponder and aspire to and what keeps surfacing for me is that in order to give with my whole heart, i really need to trust myself.  what i mean by that is that i need to trust that i am connected to the people around me, nutured by their brillance and that i have the capacity to say thank you by giving my own beauty back to them.  these are big concepts that i have understood for a long time on a mental level, but taking this trip has brought in down into my heart and shown me that the time is really here.  endevoring to trust myself this fully brings up everything--fear and shame and hope and inspiration--and it also shows me that i truly am strong enough to hold myself this way, that all my practice has led me here.

as always, it wasn't until i edited the photographs and wrote all this down that i have been able to really see what is had been for me.  i am grateful to have the strength to take the first few steps to get here, even if i must walk alongside my old friend fear, so that i get to see the results roll out in front of me.  getting to this place that feels open and clear is why i continue to show up and i'm grateful to be on this journey alongside you all.

fuel for my journey

i haven't finished editing my travel photographs yet (ok, i haven't even started), so i thought i would share these three songs which became my travel anthems during my month in thailand/bali.  i listened to them when i was pulling away from my house in the super shuttle, equal parts excited to be going and sad to be leaving.  i listened to them during my 13 hour layover in frankfurt, when after an unexciting peak at the city i got stuck on waiting on an outdoor train platform during a heat wave because i fell asleep and missed the airport station.  i listened to them when i first put my bags down in my little chiang mai hotel room with the bad carpet and realized it was up to me to get the most out of my time alone in an exotic country.  they took me over the indian ocean when i saw bali's radiant coast for the first time from above.  they shook me out of a mid-week funk during the yoga retreat so much so that i played them for the group and made them dance with me so we feel free together.  finally they brought me back the long way home and now urge me on as i think about how to write about my trip.  in my long list of travel gratitude, i wish to thank music.  i may travel but she is really what carries me.

so listen up and stay tuned for photographs and further reflections on a dream trip.  i'll get to them in between cuddling my housemates (adam and poncho), figuring out what to do with our awesome tomato crop and just soaking up the beauty of home.

grace and goodbye (for a month)

aren't these guys just the sweetest-looking family?  after knowing them all for a couple of years now, i can say that they are just as wonderful as they look, and grace is just as full of life as any five year old should be.  we had a really fun shoot last weekend at the franciscan monestary, which is incredibly lovely if you've never checked it out.  it was actually our second shoot--the first was lost when my house was broken into last spring.  erin and rob, were so understanding about it and after missing two shoots due to rain, we all agreed that the fourth time is the charm.

this was my last shoot before i leave town.  tonight i'll take a plane to frankfurt, tomorrow another to bangkok, and finally another to chiang mai in the north where i will probably collapse on my hotel bed and only rouse myself to eat some of this delicious food i've been hearing so much about.  i've been saving up my magazines for the lat month and even bought a special neck pillow in the hopes that i can sleep on some of epic journey. when i finally land, i'll finally be the world's center of thai massage and hope to soak up as much as i can in the ten days that i am there before traveling on to another adventure of leading a yoga retreat in bali. 

so obviously, this trip is a dream come true.  sarita and i talked about it for years. it felt exotic and far away and like it was something that someone else did.  yet we're making it happen.  like all big dreams, we just had the take the first step--finding our mountain retreat center in the middle of a green jungle and writing them an email to see when they were free--and the rest just happened from there.  it was a lot of work and promotion and faith, but the actual steps were pretty logical.  when i see it as just doing the next right thing, it makes me feel like the world is open to us, beckoning us even, and that all we have to do is stay focused on what we really want.

there will be 12 of us total, stepping into this retreat and other asian travels. who knows what will come of it?  one of my students decided last-minute to come to my yoga retreat in costa rica this last march.  he had a wonderful time and ended up falling in love with a beautiful swedish lady on the retreat.  since returning, she's already been to dc twice, and he has plans to go to sweden.  it's really exciting to me to hear about it and a healthy reminder that when i invite people to go along on my dream, it will give them the opportunity to go for some of their own.

so what's your dream that feels a little bigger and bolder? what's the one the makes your a little bit nervous?  say it out loud.  take a deep breath. what is the first step you could take? let it be something really small like writing an email or doing a search.  take another deep breath. now take the step. see what happens next and know you are brave in even just thinking about this stuff.

i know myself and know that i probably won't blog until i come home, but if you use instagram (and you should because it's so fun) then my username is gracedplace and i'd love for you to follow me and see some photographs. 

also, save the date for this next dream retreat with yael the last weekend in september:

today i'm feeling like there is so much inspiration in the world